Cihlar & Egeler - The Saint and her Fool

„My darling, where are your colorful wings? You look slightly distressed.”

She clings to his hand and gently kisses the sleeve of his painter smock and Harro feels uncomfortable, not knowing in what depths her thoughts are.

„What do you like best, my little Saint Rose?”

„My grey dress, Harro, it is not among the others because it has been sorted out to give away. Please, Seamstress Rose must bring it back.”

Said and done; the seamstress appears shortly afterwards, holding a simple, grey dress in her hands. Although it is cut quite plain, it is made of wonderful velvet that shimmers and reflexes each streak of light. The Princess brushes a golden streak of her hair over it.

„Magnificent!” he shouts enthusiastically. „Get dressed and come inside my studio.”

Then, as she sits on the white stool, upholstered with faded green silk, he feels the need to ask her: „Why have you chosen this specific dress?”

„I was wondering that myself,” says Frau von Hardenstein. „I cannot say that I approve of this choice. She would surely look much prettier in a white dress with colorful ribbons in her hair. You have such a nice white dress, lined with red velvet; why don’t you take that one, Julianne?”

Harro looks up in astonishment. „Is that your name, my dear Rose?

„No, my name is Charlotte Julianne Marie Rosalie and none of these are the right ones. Miss Whart had called me Juliet and Mademoiselle July, which also was not right.”

„The Duke always calls her Little One.”

„Poor Little One,” rectifies the child.

„None of these names seem to be right for you. Why had they not given you a traditional German name? One from the line of your ancient ancestors, your golden hair surely is proof of this. A friend once told me that in the coastal cities of the Holy Land in Acre, where the crusaders had lived, the most treasured Arabian children were born with blond hair. That sounds even more like you, so magical. They would have called you Griselda or Gerhildi, Willmina or Gisela…What is wrong, my Rose?”

„I felt such a stabbing in my heart when you said Gisela.”

„But child, you suddenly look as pale as a ghost.”

„You must never say that name again.” Her voice sounds gravely serious.

Frau von Hardenstein lays her wool aside, hastily stands up and gives the Lord of Thorstein a look of warning.

He seems to understand that he has in some way troubled her. „Here, now sit down and make yourself comfortable and as soon as you feel good, I will say when we begin and you must then hold as still as possible. You need not be silent; you can tell me anything you like. Maybe about the linden trees or other beautiful things you have discerned.”

Little Saint Rose nods that she is ready and immediately begins to speak, in her solemn yet tinkling voice:

„On the linden bole, this is named so, because there had first been a bastion built there, long before the linden tree had grown.”

Harro laughs. „What a lovely phrasing.”

„Oh, the first words are always given by Master Cantor, because the beginning is always the most difficult for me and you wanted to hear an essay, as my letter had also been one.”

„So, the beginning has been made, let your imagination proceed.”

Saint Rose bends a knee, embracing it with one hand, tilts her head slightly to one side and looks up at her friend with a trace of a smile. Harro restrains himself from shouting „stay just like that”; he wants to wait until she has completely forgotten herself. His artist eyes are shining in expectation.

„On this linden bole had also been a tower. Do you know something about it, my Rose?”

She begins hesitantly. „There is a red brick tower. All the guest beds in it are made of fine wooden planks. When a king or a commanding general comes, the best bed with blue silk is prepared for them. The windows are barred, a green bush is brought to the top of the tower, like a hat, and in the summer it even carries little red berries. Then all the birds can eat from it and this pleases the tower, with its watchful eye. When the chambermaids clean the rooms, there is a bright red light shining from the windows, similar to a face and quite funny to look at. At the very top of the tower is an empty room that they call the witch’s room; the door to this room can never be closed, it always opens itself at night again. The witch does this, they say, but she is long dead and it is said to be all superstition.”

„Now, Master Cantor surely had liked that phrase,” Harro suspects.

„It is from him,” she confirms proudly. „I have remembered that well. So, that is why no one should sleep in the room, even if all the guest beds are occupied and there is no more room in the castle. The door keeps opening again and again, middle in the night. The tower also has a staircase that goes around in circles, like all stairs in towers. They are called spiral staircases. The stairs lead right down to the middle of the earth. Shall I continue?”

Her eyes wander, a bit uneasy, to Frau von Hardenstein, but she has put away her knitting and is immersed in a book, or at least it seems so. Harro nods encouragingly.

„The tower is a thousand years old. In the midst of the earth, the tower is not as friendly as above, where the bush sits. Perhaps it has forgotten what is so deep down, otherwise it could surely not laugh with one eye and nod with its bush head, when all the sparrows come to visit. Maybe it does not know what had happened a thousand years ago, because it now has to guard the beds. Once, someone had gone down the stairs.”

„Darling, I beseech you; stay exactly like that for one moment. Lord, what a sight! Can you sit still and keep speaking? Tell me; was it a knight, a butler?”

He wants to capture the divine features expressed in her face. His paintbrush flies.

„Go on, my Rose!”

„It was not a knight. It was… she .”

„A woman?”

„I cannot see her face. She holds her hand in front of herself, so as not to bump into the grey stones. Her hand is white and her face even more. Her hair is as mine, only much more golden, and falls all the way to her knees. Behind her is someone, but he is not permitted to touch her, he is also afraid to do so. There is a long corridor in which a large pillar stands. Some light is burning; a yellow and a red one. The stones are now black and rough and she stands beside the pillar. Her dress has become white, it had been black before that.”

„Your story is a bit gruesome, my love, and you have become quite pallid.” The child stays silent, as Harro continues painting in fervent devotion. Yet, he wants her to keep speaking; her face shows too much sorrow when she is silent and her father surely does not want to see her painted like that. „Is that already the end of the story?”

„Oh no!” Her facial features begin to open up again, just like they had in the winter forest.

She begins to speak quietly. „There had been the night, when someone died. The linden tree has yellow tufts and because she is dead, no one recites: Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair, so that I may climb the golden stair - woe, woe, gentle wind, carry off the cap of the prince so blind, over the nettle bush, standing there alone. No loving hands comb my hair, so they do not break and I may spin them on a spindle and see them dance into fine threads, so fair.

Then the room is empty and a cross can be seen in the courtyard. Special herb bushes grow there; one is named heartache and the other neverhappy and the birds are singing never again. Never again.“

Her face is now sheltered by the book and tears slowly slide down her enflamed cheeks. Her small shoulders quiver under the grey-silken blouse.